Many herbicides are being used for weed control, which has required intensive labor in the past when growing field and garden crops. However, the development of drugs which are reliably effective at a lesser dose and which are also possible to use safely is desired due to the occurrence of chemical damage to crops, environmental persistence of the drugs, and environmental pollution caused by the drugs.
Regarding the present invention, non-patent document 1 describes the production method of N-aryl-N′ alkylcyanoformamidine similar to the compounds of the present invention.
However, this document does not describe that N-aryl-N′ alkylcyanoformamidine has herbicidal activity.    [non-patent document 1] J. Org. Chem., Vol. 58, 7001 (1993)